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A lot or a little?

The parents' guide to what's in this game.

Positive Messages

Violence & Scariness

Language

Consumerism

This product has a commercial tie-in to the "Cat in the Hat" movie.

What parents need to know

Parents need to know that while this product has a commercial tie-in to the Cat in the Hat movie, it's fun to explore, regardless of whether your kids have seen the movie. It offers a wide variety of engaging games that impart good reading skills.

User Reviews

What's it about?

Playable on the LeapPad, the LeapPad Plus, or the Quantum Pad, DR. SEUSS' CAT IN THE HAT creates a fun environment for strengthening second-grade reading skills. While reliving the story of the movie, kids play learning games that cover contractions, verb tenses, parts of speech, syllables, antonyms, synonyms, homophones and homographs, compound words, sentence structure, phonics, and logical thinking.

To learn verb tense, kids play with typical Seussian rhyme. They must select the correct verb in the rhyme: "They heard/hear a loud BUMP and they jump/jumped from their chairs. Yes, they jump/jumped from the BUMP that they heard/hear from upstairs." In an activity involving the "phunometer" (a wacky contraption that supposedly "reads" a child's personality), kids learn about adjectives and adverbs. For the phunometer to work, the Cat in the Hat asks the reader to respond to three questions by choosing from 20 adjectives and adverbs displayed on a grid.

Is it any good?

While the movie received mixed reviews, the Leapfrog software/book based on it is worth exploring. The activities and games are extremely clever and great fun to play. Because the subject matter is so whimsical, the developers wisely incorporated a zany playfulness in the learning games. The games are engaging, regardless of whether your kids have seen the movie.

Talk to your kids about ...

Families can talk about the different manifestations of the Cat in the Hat. How do the book, the movie, and the game compare? Does the Cat in the Hat's character seem consistent in all three? Which do you enjoy most?

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